Earth
David Brin
I’m not a big fan of science fiction, although I do occasionally read it and usually enjoy what I read (I loved Dune enough to consider it one of my many favorite books). So when I read the brief summary of Brin’s Earth, I was hooked. Basically, the plot revolves around a scientist who, working on creating a tiny black hole in order to use it as an energy source, discovers this tiny singularity has somehow fallen into the center of the earth—whoopsie!—where it will eat away until THE VERY WORLD IS DESTROYED. Of course, a race against time ensues: can they save the earth before it is destroyed by the black hole eating away at its core?
Upon reading this brief synopsis, I thought: interesting! I’ve certainly never read something like this before, and all the reviews gave Brin’s handling of the scientific aspects a big thumbs-up (implying even a dummy like me would have no problem grappling with the physics behind black holes and gravity).
WELL.
I stuck with it—really, I did—and it takes A LOT for me to abandon a book before I’ve finished with it. Not only did I abandon this book with a good four, five hundred pages left unread, I got rid of the book entirely. Exorcising the demons, you understand.
What was wrong with it? Where to start? I’ll start with the science, since I’ve mentioned it already. Now, I consider myself no total dolt when it comes to physics (in fact, I’d like to inform you that yours truly won the coveted “Physics Bowl” plaque during her senior year of high school) and, before deciding to be a psychologist (which I scrapped in favor of the highly lucrative world of education), I had intended on becoming an astronomer (I was obviously unaware of how much math would be involved). The point is, I understand many of the concepts even if I don’t know the equations behind them. That’s enough to understand Earth, right? A book that is apparently easy enough for a layperson? Sure. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Very wrong. I found my mind wandering during this long discussion of gravity and energy and mass and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. What? Can we get to the VERY DESTRUCTION OF THE EARTH, please? I don’t think I need to go into any more detail about this aspect of the book.
The next biggest problem was the characters. First, there was about a gazillion of them. It seemed as if every new page brought a new character. This was especially bad because I couldn’t have cared less about a single one of them. Fine, black hole: eat ‘em all. I don’t care. It’s not that Brin didn’t do a good job of making them seem real—in fact, the one strength of his book, as I will soon discuss, is just that—but I couldn’t give a rat’s behind if they all died in the swirling mass of chaos wreaked by a black hole.
The only aspect of the book which I enjoyed—but was not, alas, enough to prompt me to read further—was Brin’s rendering of his futuristic world. It was pretty darn good, actually. His futuristic world was VERY detailed (at times, too detailed) but was interesting and unique, and it provided an insightful commentary on current society.
In a nutshell: The book is about 500 pages too long; a good 200, 250 pages is more than enough to get this story told. The plot is excruciatingly slow, and the characters, though real enough, are bland. But if you’re a hardcore science-fiction fan, you’ll probably find something redeemable in it.
Bibliolatry Scale: abandoned
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Saturday, November 26, 2005
The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass
The Tin Drum
Gunter Grass
Not too long ago, I decided that I needed to read more twentieth-century Nobel laureates. One that I’ve chosen is Gunther Grass (who won the Nobel in 1999) and his first novel, The Tin Drum.
I won’t lie; it was a difficult read. I’m not even really sure I enjoyed all it, although I have to admit to wanting to brag about having read it. I should really find a way to inject it into more of my conversations. (“Ahh, yes, I know exactly what you mean. It’s just like Oskar from The Tin Drum, by Gunther Grass; have you read it? No? Grass is one of the most important German writers of the post-WWII era. It’s amazing to read about what has happened to German culture after the war. Oh, the book is juuust FAAAscinating.”)
And, yes, the book did fascinate me, although I’m still not sure I liked it. Of course I want to be challenged when reading, but I also like to have a firm grip on a book’s reality, which I didn’t often have when reading The Tin Drum. Of course, that is the point: in a world that spawned the Nazi regime and the horrors of the holocaust, reality is not something that can be easily grasped and understood.
For this reason, The Tin Drum disturbed me, which I’m sure is the author’s intention. I was particularly disturbed by the narrator, Oskar; not because he was a bad person but because I wasn’t sure how to interpret his character. On the first page of the novel, he admits he is “an inmate of a mental hospital,” an admission that of course casts a shadow of doubt over the entire narrative. Oskar, who has been sentient and alert since birth, decides to stunt his growth at two years old and remain the same size. He does not speak but instead pounds away on a tin drum, which has to be replaced every so often because he wears them out quickly. Oh, and his voice can break glass if he so wills it. Is this all the delusion of a madman? Should we take him seriously? If so, is his refusal to grow metaphorical? I found no easy answers to these questions.
Despite my difficulty with his confusing behavior, I have to say that I really liked Oskar as a character. He is not someone I fully understood as a person, but it was easy to sympathize with him. After reading the novel, I do not think he is crazy, despite his bizarre behavior. Rather, I think Grass is saying that it is the world that has gone mad, and Oskar is an innocent bystander caught in the melee.
Although this book was frustrating at times, at others it was so beautiful that I had to reread passages over and over again. Ralph Manheim, the novel’s translator, has performed his task beautifully, and I found myself wishing I knew German so that I could read these words in their original form so that I might appreciate them as Grass had written them.
My favorite scene in the book occurs toward the end of the novel, in a chapter entitled “The Onion Cellar.” It is this chapter that best illustrates the beauty of this book. The Onion Cellar is a nightclub of sorts, where people go to peel onions and shed the tears that they are unable to shed in their daily lives. It is a powerful commentary on a society that prefers detachment and impassiveness in its people. Of all the nightclubs, the Onion Cellar is the most popular. I hate to quote at length, but this piece is so moving that it illustrates for me the beauty of the entire book:
Schmuh’s guests had stopped looking, they could see nothing more, because their eyes were running over and not because their hearts were so full; for it is not true that when the heart is full the eyes necessarily overflow, some people can never manage it, especially in our century, which in spite of all the suffering and sorrow will surely be known to posterity as the tearless century. It was this drought, this tearlessness that brought those who could afford it to Schmuh’s Onion Cellar, where the host handed them a little chopping board—pig or fish—a paring knife for eighty pfennigs, and for twelve marks an ordinary […] onion, and induced them to cut their onions smaller and smaller until the juice—what did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they were able to cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away.
It is passages like this that ultimately made this book worthwhile; while some parts were hazy and I was unsure of what was “real,” the beauty found in passages like the one above made me rate the novel highly.
In a nutshell: This is not a quick read, but after finishing the novel, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I do not often feel with easier books. I won’t want to reread it again any time soon, but The Tin Drum was well worth the effort.
Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6 (content); 4 out of 6 (readability)
Gunter Grass
Not too long ago, I decided that I needed to read more twentieth-century Nobel laureates. One that I’ve chosen is Gunther Grass (who won the Nobel in 1999) and his first novel, The Tin Drum.
I won’t lie; it was a difficult read. I’m not even really sure I enjoyed all it, although I have to admit to wanting to brag about having read it. I should really find a way to inject it into more of my conversations. (“Ahh, yes, I know exactly what you mean. It’s just like Oskar from The Tin Drum, by Gunther Grass; have you read it? No? Grass is one of the most important German writers of the post-WWII era. It’s amazing to read about what has happened to German culture after the war. Oh, the book is juuust FAAAscinating.”)
And, yes, the book did fascinate me, although I’m still not sure I liked it. Of course I want to be challenged when reading, but I also like to have a firm grip on a book’s reality, which I didn’t often have when reading The Tin Drum. Of course, that is the point: in a world that spawned the Nazi regime and the horrors of the holocaust, reality is not something that can be easily grasped and understood.
For this reason, The Tin Drum disturbed me, which I’m sure is the author’s intention. I was particularly disturbed by the narrator, Oskar; not because he was a bad person but because I wasn’t sure how to interpret his character. On the first page of the novel, he admits he is “an inmate of a mental hospital,” an admission that of course casts a shadow of doubt over the entire narrative. Oskar, who has been sentient and alert since birth, decides to stunt his growth at two years old and remain the same size. He does not speak but instead pounds away on a tin drum, which has to be replaced every so often because he wears them out quickly. Oh, and his voice can break glass if he so wills it. Is this all the delusion of a madman? Should we take him seriously? If so, is his refusal to grow metaphorical? I found no easy answers to these questions.
Despite my difficulty with his confusing behavior, I have to say that I really liked Oskar as a character. He is not someone I fully understood as a person, but it was easy to sympathize with him. After reading the novel, I do not think he is crazy, despite his bizarre behavior. Rather, I think Grass is saying that it is the world that has gone mad, and Oskar is an innocent bystander caught in the melee.
Although this book was frustrating at times, at others it was so beautiful that I had to reread passages over and over again. Ralph Manheim, the novel’s translator, has performed his task beautifully, and I found myself wishing I knew German so that I could read these words in their original form so that I might appreciate them as Grass had written them.
My favorite scene in the book occurs toward the end of the novel, in a chapter entitled “The Onion Cellar.” It is this chapter that best illustrates the beauty of this book. The Onion Cellar is a nightclub of sorts, where people go to peel onions and shed the tears that they are unable to shed in their daily lives. It is a powerful commentary on a society that prefers detachment and impassiveness in its people. Of all the nightclubs, the Onion Cellar is the most popular. I hate to quote at length, but this piece is so moving that it illustrates for me the beauty of the entire book:
Schmuh’s guests had stopped looking, they could see nothing more, because their eyes were running over and not because their hearts were so full; for it is not true that when the heart is full the eyes necessarily overflow, some people can never manage it, especially in our century, which in spite of all the suffering and sorrow will surely be known to posterity as the tearless century. It was this drought, this tearlessness that brought those who could afford it to Schmuh’s Onion Cellar, where the host handed them a little chopping board—pig or fish—a paring knife for eighty pfennigs, and for twelve marks an ordinary […] onion, and induced them to cut their onions smaller and smaller until the juice—what did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they were able to cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away.
It is passages like this that ultimately made this book worthwhile; while some parts were hazy and I was unsure of what was “real,” the beauty found in passages like the one above made me rate the novel highly.
In a nutshell: This is not a quick read, but after finishing the novel, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I do not often feel with easier books. I won’t want to reread it again any time soon, but The Tin Drum was well worth the effort.
Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6 (content); 4 out of 6 (readability)
Friday, November 25, 2005
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
Even though I’ve heard this book touted by numerous critics, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas really surprised me. When I first read about the book’s concept, I was interested enough to read it, but dubious enough to fear it might seemed too contrived (actually, I thought so only to dislike the very idea I considered myself too inept to ever write; being too lazy to sit and write myself, I have allowed David Mitchell to beat me to the punch. Actually, there are a dozen authors who have beaten me; I’ll probably be writing about all of them instead of something more worthwhile).
I was intrigued by the book’s unique concept: six connected characters that span both time and space. The connection that links the characters, beginning with Adam Ewing in 1850 and continuing to Zachry in a postapocalyptic world, is not clear until later in the book. Structurally, the book tantalizes the reader by interrupting each character’s narrative midway through the tale. The reader is forced to leave scenes of increasing tension to meet the next character, whose own story soon becomes so compelling that it hurts when the reader is again thwarted the next time. These stories are so disparate, and yet, at the risk of sounding hokey, the whole is a beautiful unity.
I have to admit the book started off slowly, and I was not immediately sucked in to the tale. I am being picky here, I know, because I technically like to be sucked in by the first paragraph. Well, if I’m going to be totally honest, the first line. And, of course, that’s easier said than done. It’s really rare that I’ve been taken in by the very first line; Lolita comes to mind, but not much else. Cloud Atlas had me by about the twentieth page (give or take), so I can’t complain too much.
This book is easily “literary fiction” (a.k.a. “highbrow” fiction), yet it is such a quick read. I love when I have a hard time putting a book down and am forced to bring the book into work for a few, quick, stolen moments to get in a few pages. Cloud Atlas was just such a book. I found myself reading it early in the morning, during my lunch, and at night, and when I was finished, I felt a little breathless. There is so much to take in; I feel that I should reread it to hunt for all those myriad threads that tie the stories together. This book felt good to read. The stories are each taut and the reader feels impelled to read more, read faster to reach the conclusion and end the suspense. This desire is frustrated by the poetry of the prose, which is so haunting, I was prompted to reread a paragraph to enjoy the writing before moving on to enjoy the story.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was its unique characters. Each character is so complete that each felt like someone I knew, which is such a cliché that I feel like a jerk typing these words. And, since I’m using such trite descriptions, I’ll also describe these characters with the oft-bestowed “utterly inhabited” (another phrase I hate, but the only one that seems to do the job here). In fact, despite dedicating only about 70 pages dedicated to each character, Mitchell has been able to create characters that are psychologically complex persons.
Robert Frobisher is by far my favorite character. He was the most alive for me of all the characters. I feel the same pity for Frobisher as I do for Heathcliff, though I’m not sure why, as they have very little in common. He’s the type of character that I want to know in real life, and help him in some way (although, again, if I’m going to be honest, I probably wouldn’t actually help such a person; I’d probably just gossip about him and say things like, “Robert Frobisher? Oh, my god, I know, what a mess. Did you hear what he’s gotten himself into now? God, like, get it together, man, you know? He’s like, how old?” And then, to make myself feel better, I’d send an email that would read, “Hey, how are you? It’s been *so long* since I’ve seen you—we have to get together soon!!! Write back and let me know how you are!” only then I’d forget to write back to his reply, letting months pass until I really felt like a jerk.).
Finally, the worlds Mitchell creates are entirely believable and are as complete as the characters. His description of a not-too-future, capitalist society strikes too close to home and all too possible for us to reach. But I’ve only finished this book a day or two ago, so there’s entirely too much I could write about many aspects of the book, and if I say any more, I will give away something important. This
In a nutshell: Cloud Atlas was a quick but substantial read that lived up to its hype. It may not be the best book you ever read, but you won’t regret it.
Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6
David Mitchell
Even though I’ve heard this book touted by numerous critics, David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas really surprised me. When I first read about the book’s concept, I was interested enough to read it, but dubious enough to fear it might seemed too contrived (actually, I thought so only to dislike the very idea I considered myself too inept to ever write; being too lazy to sit and write myself, I have allowed David Mitchell to beat me to the punch. Actually, there are a dozen authors who have beaten me; I’ll probably be writing about all of them instead of something more worthwhile).
I was intrigued by the book’s unique concept: six connected characters that span both time and space. The connection that links the characters, beginning with Adam Ewing in 1850 and continuing to Zachry in a postapocalyptic world, is not clear until later in the book. Structurally, the book tantalizes the reader by interrupting each character’s narrative midway through the tale. The reader is forced to leave scenes of increasing tension to meet the next character, whose own story soon becomes so compelling that it hurts when the reader is again thwarted the next time. These stories are so disparate, and yet, at the risk of sounding hokey, the whole is a beautiful unity.
I have to admit the book started off slowly, and I was not immediately sucked in to the tale. I am being picky here, I know, because I technically like to be sucked in by the first paragraph. Well, if I’m going to be totally honest, the first line. And, of course, that’s easier said than done. It’s really rare that I’ve been taken in by the very first line; Lolita comes to mind, but not much else. Cloud Atlas had me by about the twentieth page (give or take), so I can’t complain too much.
This book is easily “literary fiction” (a.k.a. “highbrow” fiction), yet it is such a quick read. I love when I have a hard time putting a book down and am forced to bring the book into work for a few, quick, stolen moments to get in a few pages. Cloud Atlas was just such a book. I found myself reading it early in the morning, during my lunch, and at night, and when I was finished, I felt a little breathless. There is so much to take in; I feel that I should reread it to hunt for all those myriad threads that tie the stories together. This book felt good to read. The stories are each taut and the reader feels impelled to read more, read faster to reach the conclusion and end the suspense. This desire is frustrated by the poetry of the prose, which is so haunting, I was prompted to reread a paragraph to enjoy the writing before moving on to enjoy the story.
One of my favorite aspects of the book was its unique characters. Each character is so complete that each felt like someone I knew, which is such a cliché that I feel like a jerk typing these words. And, since I’m using such trite descriptions, I’ll also describe these characters with the oft-bestowed “utterly inhabited” (another phrase I hate, but the only one that seems to do the job here). In fact, despite dedicating only about 70 pages dedicated to each character, Mitchell has been able to create characters that are psychologically complex persons.
Robert Frobisher is by far my favorite character. He was the most alive for me of all the characters. I feel the same pity for Frobisher as I do for Heathcliff, though I’m not sure why, as they have very little in common. He’s the type of character that I want to know in real life, and help him in some way (although, again, if I’m going to be honest, I probably wouldn’t actually help such a person; I’d probably just gossip about him and say things like, “Robert Frobisher? Oh, my god, I know, what a mess. Did you hear what he’s gotten himself into now? God, like, get it together, man, you know? He’s like, how old?” And then, to make myself feel better, I’d send an email that would read, “Hey, how are you? It’s been *so long* since I’ve seen you—we have to get together soon!!! Write back and let me know how you are!” only then I’d forget to write back to his reply, letting months pass until I really felt like a jerk.).
Finally, the worlds Mitchell creates are entirely believable and are as complete as the characters. His description of a not-too-future, capitalist society strikes too close to home and all too possible for us to reach. But I’ve only finished this book a day or two ago, so there’s entirely too much I could write about many aspects of the book, and if I say any more, I will give away something important. This
In a nutshell: Cloud Atlas was a quick but substantial read that lived up to its hype. It may not be the best book you ever read, but you won’t regret it.
Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6
Mission
I created this site out of a desire to share those works that have possessed me. I believe to read is divine, and a healthy person exercises both the body and the mind. My purpose here is to be a fitness trainer for the mind by recommending a variety of books and by providing a forum to discuss them.
I hope to inspire others to read these incredible books and add their own thoughts here. I’ll go one step further in this humanitarian effort to even write about those books to avoid. Feel free to warn me about any of your disastrous encounters so I’ll know to steer clear of them.
I plan to discuss a variety of books; I tend to read a lot of mostly literary fiction (it is a term I hate: the term is pretentious; why not just write plain old fiction?), although I also plan to write on poetry, memoirs, philosophy, and whatever else passes through my grubby little fingers.
Let’s begin!
I hope to inspire others to read these incredible books and add their own thoughts here. I’ll go one step further in this humanitarian effort to even write about those books to avoid. Feel free to warn me about any of your disastrous encounters so I’ll know to steer clear of them.
I plan to discuss a variety of books; I tend to read a lot of mostly literary fiction (it is a term I hate: the term is pretentious; why not just write plain old fiction?), although I also plan to write on poetry, memoirs, philosophy, and whatever else passes through my grubby little fingers.
Let’s begin!
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